Perth high school PE teacher took indecent pictures of vulnerable female students for years

Tim Clarke, Legal Affairs EditorThe West Australian

Saturday, 25 November 2017 6:30AM

A physical education teacher at a Perth high school secretly took indecent pictures of young, vulnerable female students for years in his role as the school’s “unofficial photographer”, a court has been told.

The 62-year-old stockpiled the images until last year but was spotted by another teacher. Police found tens of thousands of child pornography pictures catalogued on his home and school computers.

The man had been the PE teacher at the top-performing school for more than a decade, with education said to be “his life”.

But prosecutors said it also became his opportunity to feed a growing interest in indecent pictures of young girls, which began as far back as 2008.

The District Court was told it was at an end-of-term function for students at Burswood last December when another teacher became suspicious of the photographs.

An investigation found the pictures concentrated on the breasts and buttocks of the girls, some of whom were aged under 13.

When police investigated, they found similar pictures taken of students dating from 2009.

The man told police he had taken the pictures but did not consider them sexually arousing.

But then a massive cache of child pornography — more than 43,000 photographs and 160 videos — was also found catalogued on hard drives.

Some were in the most serious category of child pornography, showing youngsters being abused amid sexual sadism.

The teacher had downloaded them from a paid subscription website.

Prosecutor Saoirle McCallion said the teacher had developed an obsession with such images, and the students involved while never identified would still have suffered the “trauma and humiliation of wondering whether they were involved”.

The teacher’s lawyer Curt Hofmann said his client had lost his job and had to move out of his home, which was close to the school.

He also said he was struggling to understand why his “moral compass” had strayed off course, and felt a “great sense of shame” at his conduct.

The man’s ill health — he had three heart attacks, two kidney transplants and skin cancers — meant he would “do it tough in a prison environment”, Mr Hofmann said.

He asked Judge Vicki Stewart to consider a suspended jail sentence.

The teacher pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography and indecently recording children. He will be sentenced next week.